In my last post, I talked about Sensory Motor Amnesia, a forgetfulness of how to move and feel an area of your soma. When Amnesia sets in, that area of your soma become unconscious and inaccessible to you. The word Soma refers to the Human Body experienced from within. In another sense, it refers to the universe experienced from your specific location. And so if there is a disconnection and loss of awareness within yourself then there is also a diminished ability to sense and move through the world around you. For this reason, SMA often leads to stiffness, inflexibility, discoordination and clumsiness navigating through the universe and through life. And not just in terms of the physical. From a somatic viewpoint we see that the whole person, including spiritual, ideological and personality development will become stiff, rigid, clumsy and inefficient. The person will become afraid of change because their ability to adapt is diminished. This is reflected in how as people age in modern society, their worldview often becomes more focused/limited and they lose the capacity to see other points of view, ways of doing things. The old adage you can't teach a dog new tricks is indicative of an "old dog" who has acumulated a great deal of Sensory Motor Amnesia. So much of what that "old dog" does is unconscious, involuntary and lost to them.
But you CAN teach an "old dog" new tricks. More importantly, you can teach a human Soma to overcome Sensory Motor Amnesia and turn it into Sensory Motor Awareness. And Because this Amnesia, this forgetfulness of how to sense and move is a Sensory Motor event, it can be addressed quite quickly through sensory motor activity, namely, slow conscious movement. Every event not just in human activity but in the universe is a sensory motor event; feedback loop between information and response. The push and pull between masses of energy, the swaying of a tree branch, the coordinated attack of an alligator, the leaping of a kangaroo, and the walking and talking of human somas. What's unique about human somas is our ability to be conscious of this sensory motor feedback and influence it.
It's this ability that got us into this mess. We have taught ourselves inadvertently, and sometimes quite actively, patterns that have led to disease, pain, and have set a path of destruction to nature and other species. These patterns have been in place for centuries, are in the very foundation of our society and, just like the back tension that we don't feel until it "goes out" with a painful spasm, we don't sense the destructiveness of these patterns until species start disappearing, economies collapse and people start getting sick on mass levels(notice the elevated rates of drug dependency, chronic illness, cancer, obesity). In a sense, society itself is a product of and an instigator of Sensory Motor Amnesia. We must now use this conscious ability to deconstruct those old patterns, reverse the damage we've done and start building more sustainable patterns within our own life and within the larger universe that we share.
As I said before, this must be a conscious process, creating Sensory Motor Awareness individually and globally. Individually, by moving slowly and gently, you force the conscious part of your brain to spring into action, finding the connections between body parts and coordinating movement through space. As your movement becomes more coordinated, all of a sudden your sensation throughout your Soma starts to improve. In this process of Sensory Motor Awareness; pain, imbalance and disease begin to disappear. As you become much more sensitive to what is happening throughout your system, your internal mechanisms of homeostasis take over, returning you to health and balance. Similarly as more of your soma becomes incorporated with movement; circulation, lymphatic drainage, blood pressure, and your immune system starts working better because all parts of you are now receiving adequate blood flow and nutrients. Your posture and temperament become more flexible, more dynamic. Your emotional range, capacity for joy, sadness and everything in between, increases dramatically.
Not only that, but as you become more sensitive internally and coordinated, you also will become more aware of your position in the world and your relations with other people. Your movement through space will become graceful, efficient, and responsive. You will have less injury and be less afraid of change because you will have faith in your innate powers of adaptability and healing. On a larger level, you will start to feel more your relationship with nature and other species. In my estimation, a populace that is engaged, aware and connected will automatically stop poisoning and destroying our planet. people that are pain/disease free will be more compassionate and joyful towards other Somas. The mass Sensory Motor Amnesia of Somas in a society is an inability to change the path of destruction we're on. And as the pains of what we're doing to the world are reflected in our own disease and suffering, so too are the joys and changes we make. What society would you live in if you felt you could do anything, and were unafraid of change? It's not that awareness in itself will be that change but mass awareness opens the door to proactivity, sustainability and successful cohabitation between all Somas; human, animal, plant, and other.
The point is to be aware, to be sensitive, to enjoy your Soma for all that it can offer you and all that you can offer the world. This is our place of control and reflection, this is our place of change. I welcome you to come and explore this with me in my regular Tuesday evening class, 6:00 at 3380 20th street or come in for a one-on-one session. That's all for now, feel free to comment and respond or share this in anyway you see fit.
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Thursday, July 16, 2009
Somatic Storytelling: the bunion
A case Study:
I saw a woman this week with a bunion, a bony growth on the inside of her big toe. She had suffered pain in this foot for twenty years and was contemplating surgery. Now, what can one do about someone else's body growing extra bone on their foot? Thinking about it from my perspective: as a somatic educator, my question is Why would someone grow extra bone in their foot in the first place. Structure over function. Structure means your bones and nervous system. Function means what you do with the structure, how you carry it through the world. It seems quite unlikely that someone would just happen to grow extra bone in their foot. There must have been a functional imperitive, the way she was using her body demanding that the structure of the foot shift.
In fact, bunions are very common among women(another plague of patriarchal society perhaps). There's speculation that it is caused by squeezing the foot into tight, constricting shoes. I think quite simply what is clear is that it means the person's center of gravity, which should be spread out evenly throughout their whole foot has been shifted, perhaps narrowed or set off center. If this happens long enough the structure will compensate.
When you look at her whole soma, indeed there is a great deal of compensation. For one thing, her weight is shifted onto the other leg. This could be so that she doesn't bear weight on the painful foot or it might be that the imbalance in the foot leading to the bunion started from this weight shift higher up in the center. Potentially from an earlier trauma. Two, there is a great deal of tension in the hips that seems to lock the pelvis and corresponding legs in their position, diminishing her capacity for comfort and healing.
So, my focus is on comfort. At this stage, there is nothing I can do to get rid of the bunion, all that I can do is help her refind her center of balance and release the tension around her pelvis letting the legs move freely and restoring ease to her gait. As with most problems, this involves keeping focused on the center of the body. This is where real change has to come from.
And I'm happy to let you know that it seems to be working. After just one session of lengthening and balancing the muscles in her waist, she felt a great deal of comfort in her body and actually noticed that the foot pain went away. As long as she continues to remind herself how to stand in an easy, balanced way, the bunion pain should go away. And I'm very curious to see if, once natural, balanced function is restored, the bunion might actually start to diminish. If the extra bone is no longer needed for support, will her Soma start to absorb it back? We shall see. This is just another example though of our amazing capacities for self change and healing, at any point in our lives.
I saw a woman this week with a bunion, a bony growth on the inside of her big toe. She had suffered pain in this foot for twenty years and was contemplating surgery. Now, what can one do about someone else's body growing extra bone on their foot? Thinking about it from my perspective: as a somatic educator, my question is Why would someone grow extra bone in their foot in the first place. Structure over function. Structure means your bones and nervous system. Function means what you do with the structure, how you carry it through the world. It seems quite unlikely that someone would just happen to grow extra bone in their foot. There must have been a functional imperitive, the way she was using her body demanding that the structure of the foot shift.
In fact, bunions are very common among women(another plague of patriarchal society perhaps). There's speculation that it is caused by squeezing the foot into tight, constricting shoes. I think quite simply what is clear is that it means the person's center of gravity, which should be spread out evenly throughout their whole foot has been shifted, perhaps narrowed or set off center. If this happens long enough the structure will compensate.
When you look at her whole soma, indeed there is a great deal of compensation. For one thing, her weight is shifted onto the other leg. This could be so that she doesn't bear weight on the painful foot or it might be that the imbalance in the foot leading to the bunion started from this weight shift higher up in the center. Potentially from an earlier trauma. Two, there is a great deal of tension in the hips that seems to lock the pelvis and corresponding legs in their position, diminishing her capacity for comfort and healing.
So, my focus is on comfort. At this stage, there is nothing I can do to get rid of the bunion, all that I can do is help her refind her center of balance and release the tension around her pelvis letting the legs move freely and restoring ease to her gait. As with most problems, this involves keeping focused on the center of the body. This is where real change has to come from.
And I'm happy to let you know that it seems to be working. After just one session of lengthening and balancing the muscles in her waist, she felt a great deal of comfort in her body and actually noticed that the foot pain went away. As long as she continues to remind herself how to stand in an easy, balanced way, the bunion pain should go away. And I'm very curious to see if, once natural, balanced function is restored, the bunion might actually start to diminish. If the extra bone is no longer needed for support, will her Soma start to absorb it back? We shall see. This is just another example though of our amazing capacities for self change and healing, at any point in our lives.
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
modelling:how we learn unconsciously from our surroundings...
I spent a beautiful couple of days up on a hillside overlooking the pacific ocean this past weekend. I set up my tent on this ridge just above the fog line, and at times it felt like I was floating on clouds. I did a bit of hiking but mostly just sat; observing, thinking, feeling, feeling, enjoying and I came back revived and inspired.
Something I often come back to when considering how we Somas develop and interact is the Mirroring reflex. Like all reflexes, the mirroring reflex is hardwired into our very structure. What it does is causes us to mimic, to reflect what we see around us. This is helpful when learning how to walk, talk, dance, run because we don't have to ask somebody how they do something, we can just observe and repeat. In fact, we don't even have to be conscious of it, we just naturally do it.
But does that stop at human mirroring? What needs to be considered is not just how we mirror other human somas, but how we mirror other animal somas and in fact, how we mirror our environment as a whole. It's nice to think that all the world is a stage and we are merely players, but that neglects the obvious fact the world, the universe, our environment is the biggest player of them all.
With modern civilization we have done a great deal to shift of surroundings, manipulating and suppressing nature. We have built stronger and stronger fortresses to live in with rigid straight walls and hard cement roads. What can one learn from cement and tall rigid houses but to become stiff, rigid and hard?
Watching the grass this weekend, I was reminded of the strength in flexibility. In order to survive through the seasons, grass, even in its dried state has to maintain an enormous amount of flexibility. As the winds gusted the tall tan grasses bent and swayed far away from their upright position and as I walked through them, they seemingly cleared a path, sharing the space with me. In this same way, in order for us Human Somas to survive in a world that is often unpredictable, definitely more crowded and sometimes quite gusty, we would do well to model these grasses and be more flexible, less rigid, more able to share our space, bend with the changes and stand up tall with the sun.
So I'm positing two things.
1 I think we all need to spend a lot more time out in nature away from the hardness, rigidness of our modern roads and buildings and
2 If we insist on continuing to create and distance ourselves from nature, can we do it in a way that will reflect growth, efficiency, flexibility, and sustainability?; inspiring ourselves with our imagination and letting the power of reflexes and nature guide us to a better place.
Something I often come back to when considering how we Somas develop and interact is the Mirroring reflex. Like all reflexes, the mirroring reflex is hardwired into our very structure. What it does is causes us to mimic, to reflect what we see around us. This is helpful when learning how to walk, talk, dance, run because we don't have to ask somebody how they do something, we can just observe and repeat. In fact, we don't even have to be conscious of it, we just naturally do it.
But does that stop at human mirroring? What needs to be considered is not just how we mirror other human somas, but how we mirror other animal somas and in fact, how we mirror our environment as a whole. It's nice to think that all the world is a stage and we are merely players, but that neglects the obvious fact the world, the universe, our environment is the biggest player of them all.
With modern civilization we have done a great deal to shift of surroundings, manipulating and suppressing nature. We have built stronger and stronger fortresses to live in with rigid straight walls and hard cement roads. What can one learn from cement and tall rigid houses but to become stiff, rigid and hard?
Watching the grass this weekend, I was reminded of the strength in flexibility. In order to survive through the seasons, grass, even in its dried state has to maintain an enormous amount of flexibility. As the winds gusted the tall tan grasses bent and swayed far away from their upright position and as I walked through them, they seemingly cleared a path, sharing the space with me. In this same way, in order for us Human Somas to survive in a world that is often unpredictable, definitely more crowded and sometimes quite gusty, we would do well to model these grasses and be more flexible, less rigid, more able to share our space, bend with the changes and stand up tall with the sun.
So I'm positing two things.
1 I think we all need to spend a lot more time out in nature away from the hardness, rigidness of our modern roads and buildings and
2 If we insist on continuing to create and distance ourselves from nature, can we do it in a way that will reflect growth, efficiency, flexibility, and sustainability?; inspiring ourselves with our imagination and letting the power of reflexes and nature guide us to a better place.
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
experimenting with the malleability of attention
Sometimes an understanding of neurophysiology really comes in handy when you come upon an unexpected situation. I wanted to share with you an experience I had with an interesting road block that required some thinking outside the box.
I've been working with this particular client pretty steadily for a few months now, helping her resolve a chronic vertigo and migraine problem. The focus for the first month or so was on simply unwinding steady tension around the torso. If you are rigid and tense all over then the shocks and jolts of the modern world will violently shake you with every step you take and bump you drive over. A relaxed, responsive Soma can easily absorb and diffuse tension throughout their system keeping them from getting jostled too much. So this was our focus in the beginning and she had been making slow and steady improvement with the home exercises and hands-on sessions.
A few weeks ago I tried to bring in more twisting to our sessions. Twisting of any sort had been quite uncomfortable for her and would trigger flair-ups in the migraines and naseau. Twisting; such an integral part to comfortable, relaxed walking, is something that needs to be comfortable.
So we began to do some very gentle twisting movements, differentiating the movement of the neck and eyes from the movement of the torso and shoulders. We moved slowly, finding comfort in every step of the way so that she could feel that twisting could be a positive experience. *Contact me for the specific technique of this movement*
And as she began to find ease and comfort through this twist she became acutely aware of a very deep tension around her esophagus, almost as if something was choking her. This is something that happens quite frequently, when you start unraveling layers of tension. In particular, this is something I've come across with trained ballet dancers. Although they are quite flexible and don't seem to have a great deal of superficial tension, there is often a a lot of deep stabilizing tension. And so at this point I asked the client if she had been trained as a dancer and indeed, as a child she had.
So what do you do with these deep muscles that don't seem to bend the joint in one particular direction but instead seem to lock around the joint, stabilizing it in all directions? You have to get a bit inventive. And so I thought back to a story I heard once of famed Neurologist V S Ramachandra helping patients with phantom pain in amputated limbs. The limb was clearly inaccessible, but through a creative use of a mirror box and the still attached limb, patients are able to release the phantom spasm and subsequent pain. Go here for a great video of him talking about this and other neurological stories http://www.ted.com/talks/vilayanur_ramachandran_on_your_mind.html
The reason for this is that all sensations of the soma occur in the sensory motor cortex, an area of amazing malleability. So to activate this part of her Soma, I had her concentrate on the tension surrounding her esophagus, and imagine it as a fist that was gripping around her throat. I've found imagery to be incredibly useful for turning something intangible into reality. So then, to attach the imagery to something useful, I had her clench her own fist on the right side; her dominant and more contracted side. So there was now a simultaneous contraction around the throat and in her hand. Through imagery these two contractions were linked together. As her fist tightened, the grip on her throat tightened and then, as the tension in her fist lessened, the tensions around the throat lessened. With the tension around her throat lessened, we could proceed to more freedom of movement and ease in twisting.
The gripper muscles of the hand just happened to be a very appropriate connection to make 1 because their action is quite similar to what was happening to her throat and 2 Because it was a very easy image to visualize, that of a hand gripping the throat. For sure, not a pleasant image, but then again there is nothing pleasant about tension around the esophagus.
I'll update you as our work together continues if anything else of note comes up. And please, if you have any commments, thoughts or suggestions, I would love to hear it.
I've been working with this particular client pretty steadily for a few months now, helping her resolve a chronic vertigo and migraine problem. The focus for the first month or so was on simply unwinding steady tension around the torso. If you are rigid and tense all over then the shocks and jolts of the modern world will violently shake you with every step you take and bump you drive over. A relaxed, responsive Soma can easily absorb and diffuse tension throughout their system keeping them from getting jostled too much. So this was our focus in the beginning and she had been making slow and steady improvement with the home exercises and hands-on sessions.
A few weeks ago I tried to bring in more twisting to our sessions. Twisting of any sort had been quite uncomfortable for her and would trigger flair-ups in the migraines and naseau. Twisting; such an integral part to comfortable, relaxed walking, is something that needs to be comfortable.
So we began to do some very gentle twisting movements, differentiating the movement of the neck and eyes from the movement of the torso and shoulders. We moved slowly, finding comfort in every step of the way so that she could feel that twisting could be a positive experience. *Contact me for the specific technique of this movement*
And as she began to find ease and comfort through this twist she became acutely aware of a very deep tension around her esophagus, almost as if something was choking her. This is something that happens quite frequently, when you start unraveling layers of tension. In particular, this is something I've come across with trained ballet dancers. Although they are quite flexible and don't seem to have a great deal of superficial tension, there is often a a lot of deep stabilizing tension. And so at this point I asked the client if she had been trained as a dancer and indeed, as a child she had.
So what do you do with these deep muscles that don't seem to bend the joint in one particular direction but instead seem to lock around the joint, stabilizing it in all directions? You have to get a bit inventive. And so I thought back to a story I heard once of famed Neurologist V S Ramachandra helping patients with phantom pain in amputated limbs. The limb was clearly inaccessible, but through a creative use of a mirror box and the still attached limb, patients are able to release the phantom spasm and subsequent pain. Go here for a great video of him talking about this and other neurological stories http://www.ted.com/talks/vilayanur_ramachandran_on_your_mind.html
The reason for this is that all sensations of the soma occur in the sensory motor cortex, an area of amazing malleability. So to activate this part of her Soma, I had her concentrate on the tension surrounding her esophagus, and imagine it as a fist that was gripping around her throat. I've found imagery to be incredibly useful for turning something intangible into reality. So then, to attach the imagery to something useful, I had her clench her own fist on the right side; her dominant and more contracted side. So there was now a simultaneous contraction around the throat and in her hand. Through imagery these two contractions were linked together. As her fist tightened, the grip on her throat tightened and then, as the tension in her fist lessened, the tensions around the throat lessened. With the tension around her throat lessened, we could proceed to more freedom of movement and ease in twisting.
The gripper muscles of the hand just happened to be a very appropriate connection to make 1 because their action is quite similar to what was happening to her throat and 2 Because it was a very easy image to visualize, that of a hand gripping the throat. For sure, not a pleasant image, but then again there is nothing pleasant about tension around the esophagus.
I'll update you as our work together continues if anything else of note comes up. And please, if you have any commments, thoughts or suggestions, I would love to hear it.
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Thoughts from a personal trainer - Mike Luque
Form matters for your body to function well.
Friday, April 24th, 2009
“Habituation is the simplest form of learning. It occurs through the constant repetition of a response. When the same bodily response occurs over and over again, its pattern is gradually “learned” at an unconscious level. Habituation is a slow, relentless adaptive act, which ingrains itself into the functional patterns of the central nervous system.”
*
Thomas Hanna “Somatics” 1988
It seems most people understand the obvious when they are at the gym, that they are working on strengthening their muscles (and hopefully stretching them out as well). But one not so noticed aspect of everything you do at the gym is that you’re training your body and nervous system to deal with all the movements you’ll do the 23 hours a day you’re not at the gym. That’s why proper form is so important. If you’re doing your exercises with poor form, when you use those muscles/movements outside the gym your body will follow the same patterns. Habituation, as Thomas Hanna puts it so clearly. So with that in mind, I want to discuss the big three most common postural/functional mistakes I see people making when working out. All three relate to the same postural distortion.
Now days, most people’s jobs involve sitting. Lots and lots of sitting. Lots of typing, staring into a computer screen. Unconsciously, most people will sit with their head forward of their shoulders. This unconscious behavior causes the strong muscles in the back of the neck to shorten (cervical extensors), the muscles at the base of the skull (sub-occipitals) to tighten (a cause of tension headaches) and the big muscles on either side of your throat (sternocleidomastoid or SCM) to shorten. This then habituates into a postural distortion called “forward head posture” (FHP). FHP can be the root of everything from headaches, neck and shoulder pain, dowager’s hump (lump of extra tissue at the base of the neck, just above shoulder blades), poor breathing patterns, back pain… the list goes on. Quite simply, it isn’t good for you. So motions in the gym that accentuate and even more strongly habituate this postural distortion have to be avoided.
1. Lat Pull Downs behind the head
Oi Vey! This one drives me up a wall. I cringe every time I see someone pull the bar down behind their head. I will frequently go to the person and suggest the correct form and explain why, but after a while its like trying to brush back the ocean with a broom. The tide of poor form is overwhelming!
If you’re doing a lat pull down behind your head, the bar needs to have space to go. So if you’re pulling it behind your head, you have to move your head forward, into FHP. Not only are you accentuating FHP by forcing your head into this position, but you’re teaching your body that every time you use your latissumus dorsi mucles, your head should move forward. You’re teaching your body to continuously reinforce this postural deviation.
When doing a lat pull down, the correct form is to lean back somewhat, looking up about 30 degrees and pull the bar to the top of your sternum, or breastbone, just below the collar bones. Your spine should also be fully upright, no rounding of the low back. This will emphasize the lat muscles to act as the primary movers and keeps the head in line with the rest of the spine. This will habituate a good, healthy standing and moving posture, reducing the effects of FHP.
2. Head popping forward (in varying exercises)
Related to the forced head motion of bringing the lat bar behind your head is an active FHP when using the arms and shoulders. I see this mostly when people are doing bicep curls or shoulder press. Whenever they reach the apex of the motion, either full flexion of the elbow in curls or arms fully extended overhead with shoulder press, their head will move forward, into FHP. When they return to the “resting” position their head travels backwards, closer to posturally correct. You see this a lot when people are really working hard and using weights that are relatively heavy for them. Again, you’re teaching your body a motion, that every time you use effort to bend your elbow to lift something, or reach for something over your head, your head will move into FHP. And if you pay attention to your body for even one hour a day, you’ll realize you do those two motions many many times throughout a day. So once again, it is very important to focus on how you’re moving. Mirrors in the gym aren’t there for you to admire how sexy you are or how big your guns are. They are there to assist you in maintaining correct form. So as you’re doing these motions, watch your head. Is it moving forward? If so, every time you do these motions, give yourself a slight double chin feeling to activate your cervical flexors (the smaller muscles in the front of your neck that tend to be weakened by FHP). This will help keep your head over your shoulders and habituate healthy functional movements both in and out of the gym.
3. Spotting on the ceiling when doing abdominal curls/crunch/sit up.
This also drives me up a wall, mostly because I know there are still trainers who teach their clients this in the mistaken belief this is posturally correct. When you’re doing an abdominal curl/crunch, your spine is rounding forward, into flexion. If you’re spotting on the ceiling, your head and neck are not moving with the rest of the spine. So while your spine is going into forward flexion, your neck is going into extension. When you’re supine (face up) and going into neck extension, you’re very strongly using the same muscles that cause FHP, the SCM, the cervical extensors and the sub-occipitals. Once again, you’re strengthening these muscles, which will only increase and reinforce FHP.
The correct head/neck motion when doing abdominal curls is to feel a double chin feeling, activating the cervical flexors, lengthen the back of your neck (taking force off the three FHP muscles mentioned) and move your head with the spine, looking toward your knees as you come up. What you don’t want to do, however, is use your hands to pull your head upward. There are good reasons to actively use your hands on your head, but to simplify the details, keep your fingers on your head but do not use your hands to lift your head. Make your cervical extensors do the work. They need to be strong too.
So remember, working out is also teaching your body movement patterns. You can either teach patterns that will benefit your posture, ensuring healthy neck, shoulders and spine, or you can help break down your body and worsen the effects of today’s computer based, high stress lifestyles. Really seems like an obvious choice, huh? Form matters. Posture matters. Keep it in mind in all your exercises.
As always, I welcome your questions and feedback. Until next time, Let’s Move!
Mike Luque is a certified Gyrotonic Instructor and Personal Trainer in San Francisco with 10 years of experience and a passion for helping people improve their lives by improving how their bodies feel, look and move. For more information on Mike, go to www.strengthofaspiral.com or call 415.225.2405
Friday, April 24th, 2009
“Habituation is the simplest form of learning. It occurs through the constant repetition of a response. When the same bodily response occurs over and over again, its pattern is gradually “learned” at an unconscious level. Habituation is a slow, relentless adaptive act, which ingrains itself into the functional patterns of the central nervous system.”
*
Thomas Hanna “Somatics” 1988
It seems most people understand the obvious when they are at the gym, that they are working on strengthening their muscles (and hopefully stretching them out as well). But one not so noticed aspect of everything you do at the gym is that you’re training your body and nervous system to deal with all the movements you’ll do the 23 hours a day you’re not at the gym. That’s why proper form is so important. If you’re doing your exercises with poor form, when you use those muscles/movements outside the gym your body will follow the same patterns. Habituation, as Thomas Hanna puts it so clearly. So with that in mind, I want to discuss the big three most common postural/functional mistakes I see people making when working out. All three relate to the same postural distortion.
Now days, most people’s jobs involve sitting. Lots and lots of sitting. Lots of typing, staring into a computer screen. Unconsciously, most people will sit with their head forward of their shoulders. This unconscious behavior causes the strong muscles in the back of the neck to shorten (cervical extensors), the muscles at the base of the skull (sub-occipitals) to tighten (a cause of tension headaches) and the big muscles on either side of your throat (sternocleidomastoid or SCM) to shorten. This then habituates into a postural distortion called “forward head posture” (FHP). FHP can be the root of everything from headaches, neck and shoulder pain, dowager’s hump (lump of extra tissue at the base of the neck, just above shoulder blades), poor breathing patterns, back pain… the list goes on. Quite simply, it isn’t good for you. So motions in the gym that accentuate and even more strongly habituate this postural distortion have to be avoided.
1. Lat Pull Downs behind the head
Oi Vey! This one drives me up a wall. I cringe every time I see someone pull the bar down behind their head. I will frequently go to the person and suggest the correct form and explain why, but after a while its like trying to brush back the ocean with a broom. The tide of poor form is overwhelming!
If you’re doing a lat pull down behind your head, the bar needs to have space to go. So if you’re pulling it behind your head, you have to move your head forward, into FHP. Not only are you accentuating FHP by forcing your head into this position, but you’re teaching your body that every time you use your latissumus dorsi mucles, your head should move forward. You’re teaching your body to continuously reinforce this postural deviation.
When doing a lat pull down, the correct form is to lean back somewhat, looking up about 30 degrees and pull the bar to the top of your sternum, or breastbone, just below the collar bones. Your spine should also be fully upright, no rounding of the low back. This will emphasize the lat muscles to act as the primary movers and keeps the head in line with the rest of the spine. This will habituate a good, healthy standing and moving posture, reducing the effects of FHP.
2. Head popping forward (in varying exercises)
Related to the forced head motion of bringing the lat bar behind your head is an active FHP when using the arms and shoulders. I see this mostly when people are doing bicep curls or shoulder press. Whenever they reach the apex of the motion, either full flexion of the elbow in curls or arms fully extended overhead with shoulder press, their head will move forward, into FHP. When they return to the “resting” position their head travels backwards, closer to posturally correct. You see this a lot when people are really working hard and using weights that are relatively heavy for them. Again, you’re teaching your body a motion, that every time you use effort to bend your elbow to lift something, or reach for something over your head, your head will move into FHP. And if you pay attention to your body for even one hour a day, you’ll realize you do those two motions many many times throughout a day. So once again, it is very important to focus on how you’re moving. Mirrors in the gym aren’t there for you to admire how sexy you are or how big your guns are. They are there to assist you in maintaining correct form. So as you’re doing these motions, watch your head. Is it moving forward? If so, every time you do these motions, give yourself a slight double chin feeling to activate your cervical flexors (the smaller muscles in the front of your neck that tend to be weakened by FHP). This will help keep your head over your shoulders and habituate healthy functional movements both in and out of the gym.
3. Spotting on the ceiling when doing abdominal curls/crunch/sit up.
This also drives me up a wall, mostly because I know there are still trainers who teach their clients this in the mistaken belief this is posturally correct. When you’re doing an abdominal curl/crunch, your spine is rounding forward, into flexion. If you’re spotting on the ceiling, your head and neck are not moving with the rest of the spine. So while your spine is going into forward flexion, your neck is going into extension. When you’re supine (face up) and going into neck extension, you’re very strongly using the same muscles that cause FHP, the SCM, the cervical extensors and the sub-occipitals. Once again, you’re strengthening these muscles, which will only increase and reinforce FHP.
The correct head/neck motion when doing abdominal curls is to feel a double chin feeling, activating the cervical flexors, lengthen the back of your neck (taking force off the three FHP muscles mentioned) and move your head with the spine, looking toward your knees as you come up. What you don’t want to do, however, is use your hands to pull your head upward. There are good reasons to actively use your hands on your head, but to simplify the details, keep your fingers on your head but do not use your hands to lift your head. Make your cervical extensors do the work. They need to be strong too.
So remember, working out is also teaching your body movement patterns. You can either teach patterns that will benefit your posture, ensuring healthy neck, shoulders and spine, or you can help break down your body and worsen the effects of today’s computer based, high stress lifestyles. Really seems like an obvious choice, huh? Form matters. Posture matters. Keep it in mind in all your exercises.
As always, I welcome your questions and feedback. Until next time, Let’s Move!
Mike Luque is a certified Gyrotonic Instructor and Personal Trainer in San Francisco with 10 years of experience and a passion for helping people improve their lives by improving how their bodies feel, look and move. For more information on Mike, go to www.strengthofaspiral.com or call 415.225.2405
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
The here and now of it
There is no here other than your own personal location. Everything else is there. Meaning that everything that happens in the world, in the universe, for us is happening within us. The singing of a bird is sensed, heard, from within, so sound itself is something that only resides within your soma.
and there is now time but the present. The present being an undefinable moment in time that is infinitely small and infinitely large. The perception of time seemingly limited to how long you are able to stay consciously engaged.
In modern physics, this is a crucial element of relativity theory. Every object in the world is in constant motion and that motion creates the sensation of mass, heaviness. Similarly, every object has a sensation of gravity, attraction, love. So that as we cling to the surface of the earth and as the earth clings to the energy of the sun, so too do the earth and sun cling to your personal internal sense of energy. There is an equal, balanced pressure from you to the earth and from the earth to you. The balancing point is contact. So for all of us, we have a center, a here that is the focal point of all the universe.
And for time, we understand now that time is truly related to the speed of an object and our current perception of the present reflects our motion around the universe. As we as objects move faster, the present moment will dilate, expanding to encompass more, past and future mergeing into one... present.
For each of us, the universe truly only exists within the scope of our perception and function. We are interdependent upon each other and seemingly our existence is necessary for the continued expansion and growth of the whole universe just as the continued expansion of the "big bang", a process still happening, inevitably led to conscious organisms that can experience and accentuate the exquisiteness of that event.
As the universe continues to expand, we are all accelerating, moving faster, dilating our present moment and becoming, as a whole, more conscious. It is inevitable, it is happening. Know it, experience it. Becoming more sensitive to your own hereness and nowness will help you to truly start to create and expand your own potential.
and there is now time but the present. The present being an undefinable moment in time that is infinitely small and infinitely large. The perception of time seemingly limited to how long you are able to stay consciously engaged.
In modern physics, this is a crucial element of relativity theory. Every object in the world is in constant motion and that motion creates the sensation of mass, heaviness. Similarly, every object has a sensation of gravity, attraction, love. So that as we cling to the surface of the earth and as the earth clings to the energy of the sun, so too do the earth and sun cling to your personal internal sense of energy. There is an equal, balanced pressure from you to the earth and from the earth to you. The balancing point is contact. So for all of us, we have a center, a here that is the focal point of all the universe.
And for time, we understand now that time is truly related to the speed of an object and our current perception of the present reflects our motion around the universe. As we as objects move faster, the present moment will dilate, expanding to encompass more, past and future mergeing into one... present.
For each of us, the universe truly only exists within the scope of our perception and function. We are interdependent upon each other and seemingly our existence is necessary for the continued expansion and growth of the whole universe just as the continued expansion of the "big bang", a process still happening, inevitably led to conscious organisms that can experience and accentuate the exquisiteness of that event.
As the universe continues to expand, we are all accelerating, moving faster, dilating our present moment and becoming, as a whole, more conscious. It is inevitable, it is happening. Know it, experience it. Becoming more sensitive to your own hereness and nowness will help you to truly start to create and expand your own potential.
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
hurts soo goooood!
Well, I'm feeling it. I really pushed myself this weekend trail running, swimming and engaging in various park activities. Who knew Bocce could be such a workout. So it seems like an appropriate time to address a very universe experience.... Muscle Ache
Question: Why do muscles ache?
This is an interesting one that I’ve only recently discovered a good answer for. Muscles ache for a very simply reason… they are being burned. When we move, contract a muscle, a complicated reaction happens that can be simplified by saying glycogen is converted into Lactic Acid.
Everytime we bend our arm, stand up, walk, eat, twist, dance, snowboard or play wii tennis we convert glycogen into lactic acid.
It is this lactic acid that actually causes the pain because being an acid, it literally burns the pain receptors in our muscles causing an acheiness. This lactic acid will stay in the interstitial areas of our muscles, between fibers and cells, waiting for the lymphatic system to come through like a janitor and clear things through.
During normal activity, this isn't a problem because there is plenty of time for the lactic acid to get cleared through the lymphatic system. In exercise terms, this is considered aerobic, meaning with oxygen.
It is during high intensity activity that this becomes a problem. Trying to climb 50 flights of stairs will trigger a burning sensation in your quads because the intensity has now pushed beyond the limits of aerobic contraction and has become anaerobic, meaning without oxygen. At this point, you are said to have passed your aneorobic threshold. What that means is you are not able to clear out lactic acid as quickly as you create it.
Performance athletes are well aware of these thing because succeeding in sports depends on being very sensitive to your anaerobic threshold. A marathon runner knows that if they are going to last 26 miles they need to make sure that they stay below their anaerobic threshold. on the other hand, a sprinter will be able to time their exertion so that every single ounce of energy is put into running those 100 yards and they will go far beyond the anaerobic threshold and be quite spent after just a short time of exertion.
Some of you might think, what does this have to do with me? I'm not a performance athlete, in fact, I haven’t moved from my desk all day? The truth is all of us, we are continually involved in movement. If you're going to yoga regularly or hiking on the weekends, this movement is active. If during the week though, we stop actively moving it does not mean that are muscles have stopped working. If you are driving for a commute, or sitting upright at your desk, if your posture is slouched or arched or tilted, if your shoulders are way up by your ears or your belly is tucked in to hide a beer belly, there is a muscular event happening. That muscular event is happening continually at an unconscious level. When you look at your posture and think, well that’s how I’ve looked for quite awhile, that means your muscles have been engaging in this way for quite awhile. And every time a muscle contracts or every second that a muscle stays contracted, it burns glycogen and creates lactic acid that needs to be cleared by your lymphatic system.
Not only does this cause a continual production of lactic acid but it also inhibits the action of your lymphatic system. By tightening a muscle you effectively create a tourniquet around the bone, joint, and arteries. The lactic acid gets stuck and cannot drain efficiently. One of the most common recommendations you’ll hear from me and other massage therapists after a treatment is to drink plenty of water because toxins have been released. Toxins can only be released if they were at one time stuck, trapped inside the grip of a tight muscle.
When this tourniquet tightens it also blocks the entrance of oxygen so that if continued, even a mild, innocuous contraction can start to pass the anaerobic threshold, creating lactic acid faster than you can clear it through. When this happens, fatigue sets in very quickly and your shoulders, back, neck, stomach become very sore and tired.
When someone's back "goes out" or they tweak their neck, what is typically happening is that the muscle goes into a spasm(100% contraction) and begins to anaerobically create lactic acid at an extreme rate, the equivalent of holding a 90lb dumbell in your bent arm for 30 seconds. The muscle will scream in pain from this rush of acid to the pain receptors and will continue to burn as long as the spasm is present. The spasm must be dealt with before the pain can start to diminish and even afterwards it can take some time for all of the lactic acid to dissolve.
Interestingly, the lymphatic system also depends of muscle contraction to push waste through the system and clear it out through digestion/elimination. So the key is not stuck movement but slow and steady contraction and release to literally pump the muscles, squeezing blood and oxygen in, lactic acid out. Simply put, a strong continual contraction will become anaerobic, depleting oxygen access and flooding the muscle with lactic acid. A continual process of movement, corresponding with balanced contraction and release gives the muscles time to rest and move through lactic acid to prepare for the next contraction.
Once again, Hanna Somatics provides the answers because not only are these techniques ideal for getting a person out of acute spasm but they are also ideal for gently and efficiently moving through the lactic acid :-)
Stay tuned because I will follow up on this with how anaerobic/aerobic contraction relates to sympathetic/parasympathetic states and how you can modify these states for better efficiency and performance on the marathon course or at your desk.
Question: Why do muscles ache?
This is an interesting one that I’ve only recently discovered a good answer for. Muscles ache for a very simply reason… they are being burned. When we move, contract a muscle, a complicated reaction happens that can be simplified by saying glycogen is converted into Lactic Acid.
Everytime we bend our arm, stand up, walk, eat, twist, dance, snowboard or play wii tennis we convert glycogen into lactic acid.
It is this lactic acid that actually causes the pain because being an acid, it literally burns the pain receptors in our muscles causing an acheiness. This lactic acid will stay in the interstitial areas of our muscles, between fibers and cells, waiting for the lymphatic system to come through like a janitor and clear things through.
During normal activity, this isn't a problem because there is plenty of time for the lactic acid to get cleared through the lymphatic system. In exercise terms, this is considered aerobic, meaning with oxygen.
It is during high intensity activity that this becomes a problem. Trying to climb 50 flights of stairs will trigger a burning sensation in your quads because the intensity has now pushed beyond the limits of aerobic contraction and has become anaerobic, meaning without oxygen. At this point, you are said to have passed your aneorobic threshold. What that means is you are not able to clear out lactic acid as quickly as you create it.
Performance athletes are well aware of these thing because succeeding in sports depends on being very sensitive to your anaerobic threshold. A marathon runner knows that if they are going to last 26 miles they need to make sure that they stay below their anaerobic threshold. on the other hand, a sprinter will be able to time their exertion so that every single ounce of energy is put into running those 100 yards and they will go far beyond the anaerobic threshold and be quite spent after just a short time of exertion.
Some of you might think, what does this have to do with me? I'm not a performance athlete, in fact, I haven’t moved from my desk all day? The truth is all of us, we are continually involved in movement. If you're going to yoga regularly or hiking on the weekends, this movement is active. If during the week though, we stop actively moving it does not mean that are muscles have stopped working. If you are driving for a commute, or sitting upright at your desk, if your posture is slouched or arched or tilted, if your shoulders are way up by your ears or your belly is tucked in to hide a beer belly, there is a muscular event happening. That muscular event is happening continually at an unconscious level. When you look at your posture and think, well that’s how I’ve looked for quite awhile, that means your muscles have been engaging in this way for quite awhile. And every time a muscle contracts or every second that a muscle stays contracted, it burns glycogen and creates lactic acid that needs to be cleared by your lymphatic system.
Not only does this cause a continual production of lactic acid but it also inhibits the action of your lymphatic system. By tightening a muscle you effectively create a tourniquet around the bone, joint, and arteries. The lactic acid gets stuck and cannot drain efficiently. One of the most common recommendations you’ll hear from me and other massage therapists after a treatment is to drink plenty of water because toxins have been released. Toxins can only be released if they were at one time stuck, trapped inside the grip of a tight muscle.
When this tourniquet tightens it also blocks the entrance of oxygen so that if continued, even a mild, innocuous contraction can start to pass the anaerobic threshold, creating lactic acid faster than you can clear it through. When this happens, fatigue sets in very quickly and your shoulders, back, neck, stomach become very sore and tired.
When someone's back "goes out" or they tweak their neck, what is typically happening is that the muscle goes into a spasm(100% contraction) and begins to anaerobically create lactic acid at an extreme rate, the equivalent of holding a 90lb dumbell in your bent arm for 30 seconds. The muscle will scream in pain from this rush of acid to the pain receptors and will continue to burn as long as the spasm is present. The spasm must be dealt with before the pain can start to diminish and even afterwards it can take some time for all of the lactic acid to dissolve.
Interestingly, the lymphatic system also depends of muscle contraction to push waste through the system and clear it out through digestion/elimination. So the key is not stuck movement but slow and steady contraction and release to literally pump the muscles, squeezing blood and oxygen in, lactic acid out. Simply put, a strong continual contraction will become anaerobic, depleting oxygen access and flooding the muscle with lactic acid. A continual process of movement, corresponding with balanced contraction and release gives the muscles time to rest and move through lactic acid to prepare for the next contraction.
Once again, Hanna Somatics provides the answers because not only are these techniques ideal for getting a person out of acute spasm but they are also ideal for gently and efficiently moving through the lactic acid :-)
Stay tuned because I will follow up on this with how anaerobic/aerobic contraction relates to sympathetic/parasympathetic states and how you can modify these states for better efficiency and performance on the marathon course or at your desk.
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